ATU WELCOME CREATIVE SHOWCASE 2023

I would like to congratulate this year’s graduating students and wish them every success with their future creative endeavours. This yearbook is a celebration and an important testimony of what they have achieved already.

Welcome to our Yeats Academy Yearbook. This is the fifth year to publish the Yearbook which celebrates our end-of-year Creative Showcase of our final year students’ creativity and art.

It is an exciting time for ATU Sligo since we became a Technological University last year. As we integrate with ATU Galway-Mayo and ATU Donegal and incorporate St Angela’s, our vision is that the Creative & Cultural Arts, which are so central in the West and Northwest of Ireland will play a pivotal role in this new university. Our Yeats Academy of Arts, Design & Architecture (YAADA), which will soon see the completion of refurbishing buildings in the creative hub on the Northern campus, will be a key player in these formative university times.

Sincere thanks to our Yeats Academy staff who provided such a rich educational experience. They encouraged each of our students to develop their unique imagination and creativity to help them acquire the knowledge, skills and experience needed to find their distinctive voice as an actor, architect, artist, designer or writer. I am very proud of what the Yeats Academy, both students and staff, have achieved.

An end-of-year show would not happen without a great team of people on board. A special thank you to our Yeats Academy academic and technical staff who supported the students, our ATU Sligo administration, marketing, communications and estates teams, the award sponsors, our event manager Oli Melia and the YAADA Head of Department Emmet O’Doherty and acting Head of Department Dara Burke. Congratulations to the students on their remarkable achievements and wishing them every success in their future creative endeavours.

I hope this yearbook and the Creative Showcase inspires future potential students to come to ATU Sligo, to push the parameters of their creativity and to pursue their dreams.

Tá súl agam go mbainfidh tú taitnamh as an leabhar seo.

Úna Parsons, Head of College and Head of Faculty of Engineering & Design, Atlantic Technological University Sligo

YAADA had another great year of growth and is going from strength to strength with over 60 staff and 600 full time students. We have rapidly growing numbers in our Architecture an Interior Architecture programmes in particular. Well done to everyone involved as the increasing demand for our courses is a testament to hard work and dedication of the staff and their passion for teaching.

The Block L is now nearing completion and will be ready for the next academic year. I had a site visit to the new black box theatre space in Block L and even in its raw state, the space is looking fantastic. It is now entering the final stage of fit out and this new performance space and will surely establish itself the heart of the Yeats Academy when it opens later this year. I want to thank Ed Millar for his tireless work with the design team and the contractors to get this project delivered.

Taking on the role of Acting Head of Department in January gave me a great opportunity to get know all the staff across the department in a short space of time. It strikes me that despite the wide variety in modes of creative practice, we are bound by our common interest in artistic communication and self expression. While the medium of communication could be writing, drawing, painting or performance, it’s that impulse to create and express ourselves as artists and designers that ties us all together as a creative group. There is so much we can learn from each other by collaborating in teaching and creative practice. The recent scrimshaw launch was a wonderful testament to that shared pursuit of artistic expression. Congratulations to all staff involved with the publication.

On the Architecture programme the staff have been working hard on a HCI funded research project – Building Change: Designing a Resilient Future through Architecture Education. All six schools of Architecture in Ireland are working together to research how education can respond to the dual challenges of the climate emergency and the housing crisis. These two challenges are inextricably linked as we can not meet our carbon targets if we build the 300,000 new homes we need to solve the housing crisis. New zero carbon methods of construction and housing delivery are needed and the architecture studio is the perfect environment to test these ideas. The ground breaking work led by Mary Byrne and her Year 3 students working on the pilot project shows the potential of an innovative project like this.

We were very lucky to have two new full time technical staff join us on in YAADA this year. I would like to extend a warm welcome Brendan Hurley and Daveth Fox who joined recently. We all wish them the best in their new role and we are delighted to have them on board.

On a personal note, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has shown so much support to me in my role as acting head of department. Thanks also to Oli Melia for all his work on the Showcase and Leon Butler and Muireann Charleton who developed the new concept for the Yearbook design this year.

I want to say a special thank you to Kate McCarthy who makes everything happen behind the scenes in YAADA. The department could not function without the energy and enthusiasm she brings to her role.

I hope everyone takes some time to enjoy the great student work on display around the campus. Congratulations to all the students in YAADA who produced such an amazing body of work this year and good luck to all of our graduating classes.

I look forward to a very exciting upcoming year for YAADA.

Dara Burke, Acting Head of YAADA

Yeats Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture